Harvey: Texans will rebound from Green Bay loss, beat Ravens

Someone responded to my post last week that the Texans would lose to Green Bay by questioning whether reporters from other cities would ever pick against their hometown teams, as if we’re supposed to be cheerleaders.

The Ravens beat reporter for the Sun, Jeff Zrebiec, predicted a 31-20 Texans’ victory, writing, “I didn’t like the Ravens’ chances in this one when Ray Lewis and Lardarius Webb were healthy. The Ravens haven’t stopped the run, pressured the quarterback or played well on the road.”

That pretty much sums it up.

The Ravens have been worried since the schedule was released about having to run their no-huddle offense inside Reliant Stadium with the crowd roaring. They might have gotten some encouragement by seeing the Packers do it without much resistance last Sunday night. But not so much. Joe Flacco is not Aaron Rodgers.

So they probably will depend on their running game, with the excellent Ray Rice. They will have some success because the Texans, like the Ravens, aren’t good against the run. But the Texans will counter with Arian Foster running against the Ravens and have more flexibility with the passing game because of the injury to Webb.

My question is, even if the Texans win, how well will they play? They’ve played seven consecutive poor quarters, surviving the Jets but crashing and burning to the Packers.

Lulls in a season happen, especially to teams that start fast and build leads within their divisions like the Texans did. But a truly good team would use last week’s result as motivation, start fast against the Ravens and not let up. There also is more riding on this game than many because the winner will have an edge over the loser for homefield advantage in the playoffs, if it should come to that.

The Texans are the ultimate cliche team when it comes to playing one game at a time. They surprised me this week, though, by mentioning how significant this game could be for the future.

They also need a win before the bye week. They don’t want to have an extra week to think about consecutive losses, any more than they want consecutive losses, especially when both were at home.

But what if they don’t play well again? You’d have to look at coaching, veteran leadership and whether the talent was overrated.

My guess is we won’t have to scrutinize any of that next week, that they will win handily — the spread is around 6 points depending on the book — and build momentum for the next challenge. There is always one waiting just around the corner in the NFL.